Of Swords and Seals
by zetca
Summary: What happens when Naruto shows a bit of initiative? Maybe something a little like this.


Chapter 1

_While men compete in war, there will be warriors. While there are warriors, there will be princes among warriors .Among the princes will be kings, and among the kings an emperor. Men such as these come once in twenty lifetimes. And should they fall in battle, then they are immortalised for all time. The Yondaime Hokage of Konohagakure was one such legend, giving strength to his allies and causing terror amongst his enemies. When he died, sacrificing himself for the sake of his village, all mourned the passing of possibly the greatest shinobi of all time. _

_Yet his legacy lived on, and it is no secret that each new generation will surpass the last. For Konohagakure, this belief needs to be true, for a dark cloud is on the horizon. The destruction of the leaf village hangs in the balance, and all their hopes lie in the hands of the one they fear above all. The one who holds the greatest of the tailed demons, the Kyuubi no Kitsune. Kept ignorant of the burden he carries, until a traitor revealed it in the hopes of becoming a hero and vanquishing the 'demon child'. This is the story of the son of the Yondaime Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto and of how his future was shaped when he showed more common sense than was expected of him on an unfinished bridge in Wave country._

Two groups of people stood staring at each other. One group was a large crowd of mercenaries and bandits, being led by a small man in a business suit and sunglasses. The other, a handful of ninja, all exhausted, one disabled. A civilian bridge builder was being guarded by a pink haired girl, standing near the prone body of a twelve year old boy. A blonde haired boy wearing a bright orange jumpsuit stood near two tall men. One was lean, silver haired, masked and with mismatched eyes. The other was black haired, rather muscled, arms hanging uselessly by his side, with chewed bandages flapping near his mouth and tears sparkling in his eyes. "Kid," he said. "Would you lend me your kunai knife?"

Naruto waited for a heartbeat, before replying, "I'll trade you for your sword. It's my last kunai."

"Hahahaha. You've got balls kid. Sure, why not. A sword's supposed to be used anyway." Naruto threw a kunai towards Zabuza, who caught it in his mouth. "Now then, let's just see who is or is not a little demon," snarled Zabuza, before launching himself at Gato.

The fight was short and bloody, and Zabuza lived up to his nickname of the 'Demon of the Bloody Mist'. Zabuza lay with several swords in his back, near the decapitated corpse of Gato. Having seen the death of their employer at the hands of a half dead ninja shook the mercenaries, and the arrival of a horde of villagers armed with a wide variety of sharp and pointy objects unnerved them even more. When four copies of the blonde burst into existence, they were horrified, and when clones of his sensei appeared across the bridge, it provoked mass panic from the ranks of the mercenaries. Kakashi walked over to the body of Zabuza, and was surprised to see he was still clinging to life.

"Tell.... the kid.... to keep the sword. Tell him.... to use it well."

"I will."

"Kakashi... do me a favour?"

"What is it?"

"I want to... see... his face."

"Sure," said Kakashi, as he pulled his hitai-ate back over his sharingan eye. He picked up Zabuza's broken body, and carried him over to the body of his faithful companion, Haku. Snow began to fall, and there, Zabuza died with a smile on his face.

Kakashi moved over to help Naruto with the sword. Naruto was having difficulty picking the massive sword up, since it was nearly twice as big as him. "Naruto let me help you with that." He pulled a scroll from his jounin vest and unrolled it. Pushing some chakra into two symbols on the scroll, a brush and a pot of ink appeared. He quickly painted a new symbol onto the scroll and set the zanbato down on top of it. With a small burst of chakra, and a small puff of smoke, the sword disappeared, and the symbol on the scroll had changed to the kanji for sword. Naruto's eyes were bulging and he said in a choked voice, "Sensei, you have to teach me how to do that!"

"Naruto, fuuinjutsu takes a lot of patience, and practice to learn. I guess I can show you how to make storage seals like this one, since we have about week before we can travel back safely. For now, we should head back to Tazuna's, and get some rest." With this, he headed over to Sasuke, picked him up and started to make his way back to Tazuna's house.

That evening, Kakashi commandeered the dining room table to start Naruto's lessons in fuuinjutsu. He had offered the lessons to both Sasuke and Sakura; however Sasuke instantly labelled it as something that wouldn't help him beat Itachi and declined, and Sakura decided that if Sasuke wasn't doing it, then it would just cut into her Sasuke time, and she'd have more fun trying to entice Sasuke to work on their 'teamwork'. Kakashi had truly sympathised with Sasuke at that point, since he too knew of the horror that was a fangirl. Actually fangirls were the reason he wore a mask, though not for the reason you might assume. He had a rather interesting condition that meant that whenever a fangirl of his got too close, he'd break out in hives. Naturally, this may scare off most fangirls, but it would also drastically reduce the chances of him replicating any more of the scenes from his Icha Icha Paradise novel with hot kunoichi. Kakashi knew where his priorities lay after all.

"Now Naruto, I don't know how much you know about the noble art of fuuinjutsu, so I'm going to start with the basics. Fuuinjutsu is the art of using drawn seals to create different effects. For example, you can create storage seals, which greatly increase the amount of things you can carry, or you can create explosion seals, which are what make explosive tags.... well, explode. They're the basic seals that most chuunin can draw, though most decide it takes too long to make all their own, and instead they buy them from shinobi stores. To do well in fuuinjutsu, you need to understand the symbols and their effects on a seal; and be creative enough to think outside the box. Sandaime-sama is good with seals, but he's not a seals master. I am relatively good compared to the average shinobi, but I'm not exceptional. Yondaime-sama was the greatest seal master Konoha has ever had, and that's because he was good at thinking what most would consider crazy thoughts. His famous Hiraishin no jutsu was first thought up primarily so he could get dango faster. But I'm getting off track. "

With this explanation, Kakashi settled down for a potentially frustrating session, where he envisioned lots of clarification would be needed, and maybe a couple of minor tears in the fabric of space and time. Hey, with Naruto around, it's always best to assume the worst will happen. Look what happened when he was born.

Kakashi's visible eye was bulging out of his head. Not only had Naruto created a viable storage seal for a kunai within an hour, but there was no visible damage to the surroundings. Naturally, Kakashi had taken a look at Naruto with his Sharingan to be sure that it wasn't an imposter under a henge, and then at the surroundings to make sure that there wasn't some giant red slavering creatures from another plane of existence about to attack, and finally sticking his head out of a nearby window to make doubly sure there weren't four guys on horses wheeling around in the sky. Sure, the seal wasn't perfect, and would most likely break if it was used too many times, but this was Naruto! Dead last of his class! He didn't learn this fast, hell, it was nearly scientific fact that he couldn't learn this fast! While Kakashi was silently freaking out, he completely forgot about the time Naruto learned the shadow clone jutsu in half a day. Since it was the only time he'd ever learned quickly on his own, it was discounted from the General Theory of Naruto's Stupidity. The tree climbing didn't count since he was with Sasuke, who was widely heralded as a genius, and Sakura, who completed the exercise at the first attempt, and was the smartest kunoichi of the year..... even if she didn't act like it most of the time.

Meanwhile, Naruto was examining his completed seal and comparing it to the example one that Kakashi had drawn for him. They weren't identical, but it was quite close. Naruto hadn't been able to get hold of storage seals before because the suppliers charged high prices for them, enough to keep him in ramen for a month. This wasn't due to any prejudice towards him; it was down to the lack of people who could make good quality seals. He really couldn't see why it was so difficult though. It was so simple, a control symbol to activate the seal when chakra was put into it, a few symbols representing the size of the storage area, and a circle to enclose it.

Kakashi managed to pick his jaw off the floor long enough to look over the seal himself, and pointed out the minor imperfections before settling back to watch him try it again. 'The irritating thing,' Kakashi mused, 'is he doesn't realise how hard this seal actually is. To seal something into a scroll, you need to know the exact dimensions of the item, and write those down as part of the seal. With my sharingan, I can instantly memorise the dimensions of an object, but Naruto doesn't have that advantage. Without it or an eye for detail, he won't be able to do quick seals. Well, it's a nice little skill to have, and if he gets himself crippled, he'll be able to make some money by selling these seals at least." Kakashi always was a little pragmatic. Once when he was on a mission with a chuunin braggart during the war, he consoled himself with the fact that if the chuunin died, he could use the body as a meat shield or an impromptu weapon. He dubbed the man 'packhorse' in his thoughts for the rest of the mission.

Naruto finished the seal and looked over his handiwork. It looked perfect, so he placed the kunai on the seal and released a small pulse of chakra. With a wisp of smoke, the kunai vanished, and the seal changed to the kanji of 'kunai'.

"Well done Naruto, now release the kunai, and try to store something else in it," Kakashi instructed. At this, Naruto unsealed the kunai, and put a shuriken on the seal. He released a pulse of chakra, but nothing happened. "As you can see, when you try to seal an item into a premade storage seal, it needs to be the same size as the item the seal was intended for. Otherwise it won't work, even if the item is smaller than the original. This part here," pointing to a part of the seal that was almost identical to the rest, "is the part that determines the dimensions of the object to be sealed."

"Kakashi- sensei, surely someone has figured out how to seal objects of different sizes into the same seal by now?"

"Well, the Yondaime did, but he never told anyone his secret, and only made a limited number. All of them are protected against anyone other than him and his immediate family being able to use or read them. So, unless you work really hard, and somehow manage to make it to the Yondaime's level of proficiency with seals, you will have to make do with drawing a new seal anytime you want to seal something, like the rest of us mere mortals."

At this, Naruto frowned, and inspected the shuriken closely, before quickly drawing another seal on the paper. "You mean like this?" he asked, before placing the shuriken on top of the seal and activating it. The shuriken disappeared into the seal, and for the second time in the space of an hour, Kakashi was speechless.

"How... How did you... You just looked at it!" Well, okay, maybe not entirely speechless. It didn't make too much sense anyway. He composed himself, before asking "How did you know what to write in sealing script? The kunai storage scroll doesn't have the specifications for a shuriken."

"I don't know sensei. I just... knew what to write. I knew how big the shuriken was, so I just wrote down what made sense. It's just... obvious."

"... That's the end of the lesson tonight Naruto. I don't think I can take anymore surprises for a while."

**This is the first chapter of a potential new fanfic. I like this idea, mostly because it actually has Naruto being slightly smarter in asking for a trade for his kunai. I mean come on, who wouldn't want that sword! Anyway, not sure if this one will be used but thought I'd get some feedback anyway. It may be a while before it is updated.**

**If you recognise anything, I don't own it. A cookie for anyone who can recognise all of the references.**


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